‘Tell you what,” says Ian Rankin, “I wish I could move like Jagger.”
We are in the Oxford Bar, the Edinburgh pub famous as the place where Rebus – Rankin’s fictional detective – does his drinking. But we are not here to talk about a book. Rather, to hear a confession of sorts: Ian Rankin is the singer in a hitherto secret band.
They are called Best Picture. A six-piece. Quite garage-y, a bit Teardrop Explodes. A debut seven-inch, Isabelle, is forthcoming on Oriel Records – on pink vinyl – with the comedian Al Murray guesting on backing vocals. “It’s a dad band,” Rankin explains. “We’re mostly men of a certain age who should know better.”
Rankin is 57. Bobby Bluebell, the band’s former pop star (guitar and vocals), is a year older. His best-known work is Young at Heart – a No 1 for the Bluebells in 1993 – a title that might serve as a motto for his new bandmates. His career as a songwriter-for-hire (Texas, Brian Wilson, Sinéad O’Connor) has allowed him to move in rarefied circles – “But, as Jack Nicholson once told me: ‘Never name-drop.’” However, there is no sense of him slumming it by playing with non-professionals; he is enjoying the camaraderie of being back in a group: “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past,” he says, “all of a sudden you’re 16 again.”
Best Picture was formed by two newspaper columnists, Kenny Farquharson (drums) and Euan McColm (guitar), who have known each other since they were young rival political editors on the Scotland on Sunday and the News of the World. Farquharson has form when it comes to making music with a bestselling novelist; he and Ali Smith were at Aberdeen University together in the early 1980s and would busk in Union Street, he on the bongos, she on the mouth organ.
Ian Rankin, growing up in Fife, dreamed of rock stardom. “The first time I ever sang in public was my sister’s wedding in 1972 at the Masonic Lodge in Cardenden.” He was 12, performing an a cappella version of The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel. “And when I got to the line, ‘Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue,’ my aunty spat her advocaat across the room.”
At uni, he fronted a short-lived new-wave outfit called the Dancing Pigs. “We rehearsed in the YWCA in Cowdenbeath. We had four fans. Two were Hells Angels and two were underage girls.”
Given a choice, he says, he would rather have been successful as a musician than as an author. Now, with Best Picture, comes the chance to live out that teenage fantasy. There is talk of an album, of gigs, of what – if they do play live – his moves should be on stage. He does not plan to dance.
Nor, in fact, does he intend to commit himself to the dad band full-time. Rebus fans can rest easy. “We’re all a long way from giving up our day jobs,” he says.
